Dry mixes for food products are widely used. Conventionally, the consumer adds liquid ingredients such as water, milk, eggs, oil, shortening, butter, etc. to the dry mix to prepare a batter or dough. The batter or dough is then cooked to form a finished good such as by baking (e.g., for layer cakes, muffins, bread), or pan frying (e.g. crepes, pancakes, griddle cakes, Irish soda bread) or other means (e.g., microwave heating).
Such mixes generally include emulsifiers as essential ingredients. The emulsifiers are added to control or impart desired end product attributes such as volume, moistness, tenderness, and other eating qualities. Frequently, the emulsifiers are added to influence interaction between one or more added ingredients, such as the water and/or oil added. In other variations, emulsifiers can be added to dry mixes whereby the shortening or added oil constituent is reduced or even eliminated to provide low fat or low calorie finished baked goods.
While useful and effective, the emulsifiers frequently are the most expensive ingredients in a dry mix. Since many emulsifiers are many times as expensive as flour and sugar, even modest reductions in the amount of emulsifier required can dramatically reduce the cost of a dry mix for food products.
The present invention provides improvements in such dry mixes and components useful in such dry mixes whereby the efficacy of the emulsifier is improved allowing for lower emulsifier utilization levels which, in turn, provides reduced cost dry mixes for prepared foods.
The art includes various methods for emulsifier addition into such dry mixes. For example, emulsifiers are often admixed into the shortening component. One reason certain emulsifiers are added to the shortening component is that such emulsifiers have high melting points. By combining the emulsifier with the shortening component that is relatively easy to disperse, a greater dispersion of the emulsifier can be obtained.
Moreover, while dispersing the emulsifier within the shortening is useful, current consumer trends favor low fat or no fat products wherein the shortening ingredient is reduced or even absent entirely.
Still another technique for improving the dispersability of an emulsifier is to provide a spray dried substrate With the emulsifier plated onto the substrate. For example, a spray dried emulsifier complex comprising about 20% emulsifier and the balance lactose as a carrier has been used in dry mixes for layer cakes and in finished dessert baked goods.
While useful, such spray dried emulsifier products are expensive due to the relatively high cost of spray drying processing.
Given the state of the art, there is a continuing need for new and improved emulsifier materials useful for inclusion in dry mixes for prepared food products whereby the amount of costly emulsifier can be reduced.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide new, more efficacious emulsifier materials useful for inclusion into dry mixes for prepared food products.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such emulsifier materials that can be incorporated into dry mixes for prepared food products at reduced but effective emulsifier levels.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide emulsifier materials that are useful in the provision of dry mixes for prepared food products for finished food products characterized by reduced or low fat levels.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide methods for the preparation of such emulsifier materials. Another object is to provide methods for the use of such emulsifier materials.
Still another objective is to provide improved lower cost dry mixes for prepared foods that contain lower concentrations of emulsifiers but which provide comparable emulsifier performance by virtue of enhanced dispersion of the emulsifier.
Surprisingly, the above objectives can be realized and superior emulsifier materials provided as well as dry mixes containing such emulsifier materials. In the present invention, it has been discovered that the efficacy of emulsifiers can be improved by dispersing at least a portion of the emulsifiers in an amorphous low molecular carbohydrate matrix in powder form rather than in the conventional shortening component. Emulsifier materials are provided in the form of amorphous carbohydrate matrices containing the emulsifiers. The matrices are essentially characterized in part by a particle size of less than 1000 microns.